Unlike Tony, Sony has the cool to slip the gallows

Surely I was not alone last week in spotting the parallels between the collapsing Tony Blair premiership and Sony's PS3 delay. Both Sony and Tony have dominated their fields for a decade - mostly by appealing to the wider public without obsessing over the approval of the hardcore. Yet both have got themselves into tricky situations - Blair via Iraq, Sony via Blu-ray - and the public is turning on them. Regime change may be imminent.

So videogame pundits and blogging fanboys are gathering at the gallows, rubbing their hands together with unsuccessfully disguised glee. But a videogame industry with a fatally compromised Sony would be a disaster. The company's competitors - Nintendo and Microsoft - are brilliant in their niches, but don't engage across multiple demographics. If Nintendo, for example, had overseen Grand Theft Auto, the series would have taken place in a fairy tale city, with Mario as the loveable gangster protagonist, skipping through the streets, jumping on naughty turtles. Mario will never, ever, under any circumstances, exclaim, in that phoney Italian accent of his, "It's-a-me, Mario, I'm-a-gonna put a cap uppa ya ass".

Meanwhile, Sony's Singstar series is a joyous ode to karaoke culture. Imagine it created on Xbox, with its target audience of goth American teens: the games would involve dark elves singing thrash metal songs. Microsoft doesn't really do cool - it doesn't do pop music or kitsch or fashion. Sony does. Xbox 360 will soon get its own gaming camera which, I imagine, will be used for serious-minded gesture-recognition, allowing you to, say, look round corners in Halo 4 using head movements rather than strafe controls. I can't imagine an Xbox take on PS2's EyeToy Play - daft little mini-games where you wave your arms around like a demented monkey. Microsoft doesn't do demented monkeys. (Sit down, Mr Ballmer.)

And what was Sony's big mistake? Delaying a videogame console? Pah, everyone does that. Dreamcast was delayed in Europe, N64 was delayed everywhere, Xbox 360 was so short of units for its "global" launch, most territories had to wait months for a reliable supply. Delay is part of the fabric of the industry. This has to do with longevity. PlayStation has been at the top so long, people are almost willing it to collapse.

Sony, unlike Tony, will survive. Most analysts agree the PlayStation brand will dominate once again. It has big series like Gran Turismo, Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy; it has the unconditional support of publishing giants like EA. Most of all, it has no clearcut usurper, no Machiavellian malcontent waiting in the wings. Face it: there is no Gordon Brown of videogames.

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